Fast, easy, joyful surprise breech birth.

I’ve been meaning to write in and tell you about my successful use of the Hypnobabies Home Study course to prepare for my first birth in the summer of 2007. The techniques were so successful that I delivered my son breech at home with a smile on my face the whole time.

Here’s my story:

Around 7 PM the night before my actual due date, I started having early “waves.” We tried to sleep, though I couldn’t, and then around 2 AM, we called the midwife to say that we thought things were moving along. The midwife told us to call her when the pain became “too much to handle” or the time between contractions very short.

So while my husband got things ready, I lay in a bed and did my focused relaxation; it felt mostly like I was having short spurts of menstruation cramps every so often. It was really manageable.

We finally called in the midwife around 5 AM, and when she checked me, I was already 8 cm dilated! I hadn’t realized it, but it seemed I’d been in “active labor” for hours. She quickly got the tub ready, as I had planned to at least labor in a tub to help with the pain I assumed I’d have. But there wasn’t really any pain and things were going so quickly and smoothly that there seemed no need for the tub.

We listened to a harp music CD and my husband used the “peace” cue with a hand on my shoulder whenever I felt a wave. I became aware and was told afterward that I was smiling (yes, smiling) the whole time! I just kept thinking, birth is natural and wonderful, and I couldn’t wait to see my baby. It’s hard to describe the blissful scene in our bedroom that early morning. We had candles around, soft music playing, and my husband and I held onto each other with so much love. It was so peaceful and moving, nothing at all like those horrible scenes one sees in the movies.

At 5:40 AM, my body just started to push naturally. It was amazing just to leave everything up to my body and to feel the push taking over. I pictured my baby moving lower and lower with every surge. Between pushes at some point, the midwifes told my husband the surprising news that my son was breech, presenting bottom first. He decided that it would be best not to tell me, as things were going so well, and he thought it would scare me. He was right.

I continued to push believing everything was fine. “Are those the shoulders coming out?” I’d ask. They kept reassuring me that things were going great and to keep doing what I was doing. Although I’d been laboring on my side for almost the whole time, I decided to get on my knees in hopes of having gravity work for me. I held onto my husband for support.

At the last moment, the midwives said that I would need to put everything I had into the next push. I felt a very intense stretching that was as close to pain as I’d gotten but still quite manageable and out came my son at 7 AM, after only about an hour of pushing.

He took a minute to revive fully but after a puff of room air and a spray of Bach’s rescue remedy, he was alert and wide-eyed. I delivered the placenta with ease 20 minutes later, with my beautiful baby boy in my arms and still attached via the umbilical chord.

I can’t say the next weeks were easy, but the birth itself could not have been more fluid. My husband and I still get teary eyed when we think back to that peaceful, incredible day. And my midwives, who had attended hundreds and hundreds of natural childbirths but had never taken part in a Hypnobabies birth, were stunned. It was, they concurred, one of the most beautiful births they had ever witnessed.